Victor Wooten
Born: September 11, 1964
Birthplace: Mountain Home, Idaho
Famous For...: American bassist, composer, author and producer, who has performed solo and collaborated with various artists, and has been the bassist Béla Fleck and the Flecktones since the group's formation in 1988.
Notable Achievements: Recipient of five Grammy Awards, named "Bass Player of the Year" award from Bass Player magazine three times in a row, and was the first person to win the award more than once.
Victor Wooten was 3 years old when he began to learn the bass.
The youngest of the five Wooten Brothers, all highly regarded musicians, Victor was playing in a band with them by the age of 6. He toured throughout his young life and learned other instruments, like cello and fiddle, to add to his repertoire.
Victor's work has been honored with awards for his talents throughout the years, including Grammys and "Bass Player of the Year," and he continues to actively record new music. He worked with Stanley Clarke and Marcus Miller, under the name SMV, to record Thunder and toured. He also has been a member of several fusion and progressive supergroups, including Bass Extremes (with Steve Bailey, Derico Watson and Oteil Burbridge), the Vital Tech Tones (with Scott Henderson and Steve Smith), the indian jazz fusion band PRASANNA and the "Extraction" trio (with Greg Howe and Dennis Chambers), and has toured with the Dave Matthews Band.
Victor developed many new fingering techniques that were essentially undiscovered before his time and recently published a book, The Music Lesson (also available as a seven-CD audio book featuring him and friends narrating and playing), using a parable format to convey life lessons through elements of music, like articulation, tone and phrasing.
